hmm I was just looking at the wattage of this 1100t and it is 125 compared to my 15 2500k , I am stating to wonder if I just pull the vid card fron the Intel and use the HDMI off of the asrock z77 Extreme 3 motherboard if that will be good enough for now mind you my Ibntel is waterooled so I would imagine that the pump and fans draw a bit more juice .

Shadowmeph do you have a "killawatt" or a "blueplanet" to monitor your KW/h usage? With one of those you could play around trying different configurations of your system to optimize efficiency. Personally I would stick with the 2500k rig and tweak it a bit... maybe. I would make use of system sleep or turn off your rig when it is not in use. These days cpus and gpu scale so well with power and clocks states that I really see NO need to buy a new power sipping system because IMHO there are little to No gains to be found.

hmm ok now I am getting a bit off topic and am wondering that maybe I should start a new topic on this subject lol.

, since the intel system is my gaming system I am wondering if I can use both the 560ti card for gaming and the onboard HDMI for watching vids and other such things.
one of the reasons why I don't use the HDMI on the 560 video card is becasue of the really horrible placement the mini hdmi is placed so close to the edge of the card that I had actually broke the thing on my first 560ti, I got a decent deal on another card so I switched them out but only use the dvi cable.

I like that mini box case on how it can mount on the back of an LCD or LED tv tht could be perfect if I didn't play some simple games at times

Just discovered your post and the AMD AM1 platform does have my attention. I'm looking to build a budget PC that's going to be used with Office 365, Chrome web browsing, and watching internet video. Nothing else. If I use a Samsung 840 EVO SSD with the AMD AM1 platform, will performance be noticeably as fast as on an Intel I5-4670K? I hesitate to go with such a cheap platform, but then again, I think that in 2014, just about anything that AMD/Intel comes out with should be more than fast enough to run those basic applications. Regardless of whether I go with Intel Haswell or AMD AM1, I intend to install 16GB of RAM.

Just discovered your post and the AMD AM1 platform does have my attention. I'm looking to build a budget PC that's going to be used with Office 365, Chrome web browsing, and watching internet video. Nothing else. If I use a Samsung 840 EVO SSD with the AMD AM1 platform, will performance be noticeably as fast as on an Intel I5-4670K? I hesitate to go with such a cheap platform, but then again, I think that in 2014, just about anything that AMD/Intel comes out with should be more than fast enough to run those basic applications. Regardless of whether I go with Intel Haswell or AMD AM1, I intend to install 16GB of RAM.

I've been happy with it for what I do with it. Currently running with an early Samsung 240GB SSD and 4GB memory.

Win 8.1, Foobar running in the background 24/7 as a transcoding media server (when I say "Media" assume it's just audio), Ripping my new CDs, and converting Flac encoded files to MP3, XBMC for audio playback and visualizations, and general PC / surfing duties (Including the occasional music video).

It'll never be as fast as an i3 let alone an i5, but that's relative to your expectations and the load you put on it. I converted my full 60 Gig FLAC encoded library over to MP3 and it wasn't so slow that I felt I needed to switch the crunching over to my main PC. Keep in mind though that the intel equivalent is Bay-Trail with offererings like the J1900 and not Haswell (I'm currently trying out a J1900 under winX and I'm not sure if it's the winX or if it's the platform but I find the AMD to be much snappier). The price points puts Haswell in a completely different market.

You may also want to consider an unlocked pentium anny edition paired up with an H81 board. I put one together with the board + processor costing me somewhere around $150 and that thing screams at single threaded apps when OC'd.

Seems to me I saw something about new AM1 processors on the horizon but I'm not finding anything substantial through google.

And before people go saying the PSU will explode...I have a router running pfsense with a similar build (AM1) and it has been chugging away for some time. It's a decent feature rich small case for those with tight budgets.

This is actually a good topic as I'm almost thinking of doing the same thing. Currently have a Z77 Sabertooth with an I5 3570, 16gb ram and 240gb SSD (plus a ton of hard drives) and while it's nice to have the extra power when I transcode movies do I really need this much? The only big thing is I would need triple monitor support as I do a lot of IT work from home but I'm sure my 7870 is more than enough. I'd even be temped to get something less powerful as long as it uses less juice. I'm wondering what I could get away with in regards a lesser computer since I really don't game at all.

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